In the United States, telecommunications laws such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996 provide for long distance telephone companies to compensate local telephone companies (also known as local exchange carriers (LECs)) for long distance telephone calls that are routed across a LEC's network. For example, when a user in California places a toll-free long distance call to a call recipient in New York, the telephone call may be routed from a first LEC in California to a second LEC in Utah, to a third LEC in Kansas, to a fourth LEC in Illinois, and so on until the call is eventually routed to a LEC located near the call recipient in New York. Under United States law, each LEC between California and New York receives payment from the long distance telephone company (called an intercarrier compensation fee) for routing the long distance telephone call, with the rural LECs (for example, a LEC in New Harmony, Utah or Grenola, Kans.) receiving higher compensation than LECs located in more urban areas (for example, a LEC in Los Angeles, Calif. or Chicago, Ill.).
For certain LECs—particularly those located in rural areas—the lucrative nature of intercarrier compensation fees has led to a practice known as traffic pumping. Traffic pumping occurs when a LEC causes a large number of long distance calls to be routed across the LEC's network in order to receive the benefit of addition intercarrier compensation fees. The corresponding increase in volume of traffic pumping calls has myriad negative effects on long distance telephone companies and well as companies across various industries that receive long distance phone calls. For example, both long distance telephone companies and companies that receive long distance telephone calls ultimately bear the expense associated with paying higher intercarrier compensation fees to LECs. In addition, companies that rely on the ability to receive long distance calls suffer from receiving a higher number of nuisance calls. For example, a nuisance call may be an automated call made by a non-human actor (such as a computer system) whose goal is not to communicate with the agent but rather to increase the duration of the phone call as long as possible in order to maximize intercarrier compensation fees.
Previous attempts at detecting and preventing traffic pumping calls have proven ineffective in part because calls that are associated with traffic pumping activity often are associated with fake (or “spoofed”) caller identification information, thereby making it difficult to detect traffic pumping based on caller identify. Moreover, because only limited information is typically passed between various LECs as a long distance call is routed from the caller to the call recipient, it is difficult and time-consuming to trace traffic pumping activity to a source by analyzing call activity records associated with multiple involved LECs. Therefore, a need exists to detect and take corrective action to calls associated with traffic pumping activity in an efficient and timely manner.